Airing Dirty Laundry:
The Weirdest Things We've Found in Your Linens

You must know the feeling. You’re unloading the dryer and when you get to the bottom of it all and everything is nice and folded, there’s something unexpected lying in the drum. Usually, it’s money: a few crumpled singles, occasionally something larger. Or, the handful of change that’s been the source of that persistent rattle for the last 45 minutes.

So, you can just imagine how it is for a company whose entire business model is built around servicing people’s dirty linens and uniforms on a daily basis. Or, maybe you can’t. Just for the fun of it – and, okay, partly to make a point – we thought we’d relate some of the oddities that have happened over the years while getting the laundry spotless at Miller’s Textile Services.

Should We Call Missing Persons?

The hands-down winner for all-time strangest happening involved a living, breathing human being. This one goes back a few years and involves our servicing a juvenile detention center. Seems that some time after the standard laundry pick-up, the customer realized they were short one person when doing the usual head count.

After eliminating the various possibilities, the officials involved concluded that the culprit must have made his exit in the laundry cart. They quickly called ahead and alerted both our Springfield facility and the local law enforcement authorities. As a result, when our truck stopped the police were waiting to open the door. You can imagine both the surprise and the dismay of the escapee as he quickly learned that he was going to have to return to the detention center instead of taking a plant tour!

Honey, I Shrunk The Furniture.

When you’re dealing with a reputable company like Miller’s Textile Services, you don’t have to worry about your uniforms or linens shrinking. But furniture, we’re not so sure of.

After one pick-up, we actually found a chair wrapped up in the soiled laundry. We took it as a message that our customer wanted us to expand our table-related cleaning offerings, but were unable to find an industrial dryer that could properly accommodate wood and metal.

Who’s Having The Kegger This Weekend?

A similar problem occurred when a customer inadvertently left a beer keg in a batch of soiled laundry. At least, we’re assuming that re-brewing the contents in an industrial washing and drying process was not the true intention.

Seriously, incidents like these have provided us with some laughs over the years, but we realize they also underscore how busy our customers tend to be when attending the day-to-day challenges of running their businesses. Of course, we take care to simplify their lives by returning the accidentally lost items promptly.

The Browns Aren’t That Bad.

Granted, it hasn’t been all fun and games since The Return. However, during a recent rough spell, one season ticket owner apparently registered their disapproval by dropping two tickets to the Cleveland Browns – Indianapolis Colts game into their outgoing laundry.

Fortunately, we were able to return the tickets just in time for their owner to endure another one-point loss. We’re always happy to serve!

The Money Back Guarantee

Remember those crumpled singles? For one customer, the sum was rather larger. After one of our usual runs, we received a call indicating that the owner’s son may have left $1,000 in the pocket of his uniform. Sure enough, there it was. The customer trusted us enough to say “just bring it with you when you return next week”.

Yes, we returned the money to its rightful owner. Not that we take any credit for that. Like someone once wrote, integrity is what you do when no one is watching.

Baubles, Bangles and Teeth

Believe it or not, we’re getting down to the kinds of finds that happen with astonishing regularity. Our personnel routinely discover wedding rings and other jewelry hiding in uniforms and soiled linens. In addition, we have found personal pharmaceuticals and have done our best to return them to their proper owners.

When it comes to personal items, another of the strangest castaways was a pair of false teeth. But we’re not discounting the possibility that they just needed a good cleaning.

That’s Not Our Bag.

Recently, we had a large restaurant customer call us to inform that our route rep had not left enough soiled laundry bags, with the result that they had run out halfway through the week. Not good.

After checking with our route rep, who maintained that he had left the usual number of bags, we resolved to get to the bottom of the basket, so to speak. After a special trip to make sure the customer had enough bags, we discovered that an employee had piled soiled linen on top of a bag full of the missing empty bags.

No harm, no foul. Our point in relating this and our other stories is that your business is very important to everyone at Miller’s Textile Services. When odd or non-standard things happen, we always do our best to get to the heart of the matter and immediately take action to get you what you need.